


Slow Volcanoes

by commoncomitatus



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F, Intimacy, Self-Discovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-16
Updated: 2017-03-16
Packaged: 2018-10-06 08:47:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10330904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/commoncomitatus/pseuds/commoncomitatus
Summary: Mid-6A. Belle and Zelena, and the beasts they tame in each other.





	

***

“It’s not in my blood,” Zelena says.

She’s been drinking. Scotch, maybe, or bourbon, something so strong it sticks to the roof of her mouth. Belle can taste it, rich warmth blooming on her tongue, catching on her lips when she wets them. She swallows, stares, and sighs. She doesn’t condone this, can’t condone it, but _oh_ , Zelena is so radiant when she’s half-drunk and wholly undone. Flushed, swaying just slightly, mouth half-open and hair dishevelled; she’s a disaster, windswept and wrecked and wondrous, and Belle could — _will_ — drown in her.

“I know,” she says, and kisses her.

It’s an awkward angle, all craned necks and stretched limbs. Zelena is so tall, and she always wears heels. Even here, in the comfort of her own home, she’s dressed up to the nines; it’s never made much sense to Belle, and it certainly doesn’t now. Zelena doesn’t need any help in losing her balance; she’s unsteady enough already, bracing against the door jamb, limbs all over the place, and Belle has to lean up and up and _up_ , stretching with her whole body just for a chance at finding her mouth.

She does find it, though, and _oh_ , when she does she feels like she’s drifting, a balloon cut free of its tether; the ground could disappear and she’d never even notice. Gravity loses its grip when they do this, when she tastes the liquor in Zelena’s mouth.

Zelena pulls away, breathless. “It’s not,” she whispers. “I’m not…”

“I know,” Belle says again. She closes her eyes. “I know, I know.”

She holds her close, arms climbing the bones of her back. Zelena is all bones, it seems, every part of her jagged and jutting like an old, old tree grown tall and brittle. Belle has marked those lines, the skeleton frame, a thousand times by now; with her hands and her mouth, she’s marked every part of her. She could paint her, sketch her, draw her body from the inside out. That is, if she knew how to paint or sketch, if she knew how to do anything but read and think and speak in clumsy, awkward truths.

Zelena rocks in her arms. Belle can hear the echo of clinking glass in the hitch of her breath, the whimpers caught in her throat. “I’m not like _that_ ,” she says. “I’m wicked, but I’m not…”

Belle keeps her eyes shut. “I know.” Again and again and again, for all the difference it will make. “I know you’re not.”

She finds Zelena’s wrist, circles it with her whole hand. It’s deceptively delicate, the veins like tiny wires running between her fingers. She can feel the power thrumming through them, magic and something deeper. Ambition, perhaps, or else a kind of obsession; it’s so hard to tell sometimes. It’s blood, not the kind that comes from family but the kind that breathes survival, the kind that keeps the body alive.

She flexes her fingers, squeezes tight like a bracelet. Like a cuff.

Zelena’s breathing grows shallow. Her pulse quickens beneath Belle’s palm, then slows, slows, slows. “I’ve done terrible things,” she whispers.

“Yes.” She won’t lie. Neither of them want her to. “You have.”

“I’ve hurt people.” The tendons in her wrist are straining against Belle’s fingers. Belle tightens her grip. “Killed people.”

“Yes.” She opens her eyes to find Zelena’s squeezed shut. “Zelena…”

Zelena silences her with another kiss, ravenous and desperate. _Don’t_ , she doesn’t say. _Don’t forgive me. Don’t tell me I can be redeemed. Don’t ever let me forget the things I’ve done._ She kisses her like the whole world hangs on it, like her breath will stop if she doesn’t stop Belle’s. She kisses her like she needs it, the taste of her like oxygen, like life, like something more powerful than magic. Belle can feel the power in her, the hum and the crackle in her blood; it presses against her fingers, tingles against her lips, sets off sparks where their bodies touch. She wouldn’t extinguish this even if she could.

“Don’t,” Zelena says when they break apart.

Belle swallows. Her chest swells. “I won’t.”

It’s enough for her. She wishes it could be enough for Zelena as well, but she knows it won’t be. For someone so wicked, someone who has done such terrible things, she seems so fragile now. She always does when they do this, when she’s been drinking and she needs to drown. She trembles in Belle’s arms, sways and leans against the wall, the door, against any surface that can hold her. She lets Belle hold her as well, tight and tight and _tight_ , shuddering when her fingers leave bruises on her wrist. She likes it that way, Belle knows. It makes her feel safe.

“Don’t,” she whispers again. Her mouth is wet, her voice rich with drink and something far more dangerous. Belle can’t look away. “Don’t let me hurt you.”

Belle catches her lips, not with her own but with her fingertips.

“Never,” she says.

*

Zelena only drinks when she’s upset.

Belle learned this some time ago. In the Underworld, she drowned enough of her senses to offer a sleeping curse as a viable alternative to having an actual conversation with Hades. Belle didn’t think much of it at the time — she had rather more pressing issues to worry about — but things have changed between them since then and now she’s allowed to see the patterns, to question and wonder and maybe try to understand them.

It was a few weeks ago, the first time it happened like this, with her fingers on Zelena’s skin and Zelena’s taste in her mouth.

Belle hadn’t been awake very long. She was living on Hook’s ship, the Jolly Roger, hiding from Rumple and trying to keep a low profile, and Zelena must have gotten word of the situation from somewhere because all of a sudden there she was. A burst of green smoke, a flash and a crack, and then…

“Heard you were back with us.”

Belle sat bolt upright. “Zelena?”

“Who else?” She smirked for about half a second, then lurched and turned green. “My _god_ , how do you stand this thing?”

Belle blinked. For a blissful moment, she didn’t understand. “It’s moored,” she said. “It’s not like we’re on the high seas.”

“Well, it certainly feels like it,” Zelena grumbled, wobbling on her feet.

Belle chuckled. She didn’t recognise the warning signs until a few moments later, when Zelena staggered over to the table and dropped down onto the nearest available seat, when she was so close that there was no avoiding it, the rich smell of liquor utterly inescapable. Suddenly, the swerving unsteadiness made entirely too much sense.

“You’re drunk,” Belle said with a sigh.

Zelena’s eyes flashed fire. “Am not.”

Belle didn’t understand that, either. The defensive tone, the way her shoulders and her spine went stiff, the angry flush creeping up her neck. How was she to know they meant something? How was she to know the dark things that awoke in Zelena’s head at the word _drunk_? It wouldn’t make sense until later, when Zelena was naked and brave, when her hair covered her face, when Belle finally realised there was a story buried under all those curls.

“Well,” she said, foolishly naive, “you’re definitely not sober.”

Zelena’s lip trembled just slightly. “No,” she said. “I’m not.”

Naive though she was, Belle was not stupid. Even back then, even when she had no reason to know better, she knew enough to ask, “What happened?”

It took five minutes, no more. Five minutes for Zelena to explain everything, for Belle to catch up on all the things she missed while she was asleep, on Hades and Robin Hood, on Regina blaming and hating her sister, on the disasters, one after another, that passed her by as she slumbered safe and sound and oblivious. Five minutes, that was all, for the world to bend and transform between them, for the tears in Zelena’s eyes to spill over, for her liquor-loose tongue to trip over itself, five minutes for her insides to show.

“I told you,” she said, the words all but incomprehensible through choking little sobs. “I told you I’d never get my happy ending.”

Belle held her. She still doesn’t know why she did that, why she didn’t keep her distance, stay back where it was safe. She knew then, as she’s always known, that Zelena is dangerous, that she is a villain. She knew it then and she knows it now… but _oh_ , when Zelena wept Belle’s heart did too, and _oh_ , when Zelena said _“I feel so lost,”_ Belle thought _so do I, so do I_. Unable to trust her husband, cut off from her friends, trapped on a borrowed boat, adrift and alone and so terribly lonely… she understood, oh, she really did.

Belle has always had a weakness for weakness. Rumple wears it so well, so beautifully, but he despises it in himself. He’s so ashamed of the very thing that Belle loves most, and she can explain it a hundred times, two hundred, as many times as he has years, but he will never understand why his weakest moments are the very best of him.

Rumple never tries. He makes excuses then wonders why it’s not enough. He sees the world a particular way, his way, and then he decides that’s the only way it can be. He turns away from the light again and again and again, and he will do whatever it takes, however despicable, to drag everyone else down with him. Belle isn’t the only victim of that, but she’s always been the most willing, the most eager. It’s her fault, so much more than his, that she keeps falling for it.

Zelena is the opposite. That’s what Belle realised that day, holding her, hearing her cry, watching the venom sink its teeth into her as she snarled and spat and sobbed Regina’s name.

“I tried,” she said, in Belle’s arms. “I tried, I tried, I tried.”

“I know,” Belle said, and kissed her forehead. “I know,” she said, and kissed her cheek, her jaw, the corners of her mouth. “I know,” she said, and kissed her and kissed her and kissed her.

It was awkward, their first time. Zelena, flushed with drink, lurching against the rhythm of the boat, resisting everything, and Belle underneath her trying in vain to ground them both. Neither of them really knew what they were doing and neither was in any position to try, both uncomfortable and confused, both wrestling with their own demons. Belle’s mind was filled with visions of Rumple, guilt and shame colouring the moment, and as for Zelena, well, who knew? All Belle could say for sure was that she cried, that she choked on Regina’s name, on Hades’s, on every name in the world except the one trying to kiss her.

Afterwards, Belle traced the bare bones of Zelena’s back as she retched miserably in the corner. Swallowing down the urge to do the same, she said, without judgement, “You _are_ drunk.”

“No.” Still naked, her hair hanging down to cover her face, she shook like an earthquake. “ _He_ was drunk. I’m just… not sober.”

Belle felt the world pitch beneath her, a jolt that had nothing to do with the boat. “I see,” she said, and oh, yes, she did.

Zelena didn’t seem to hear her, or else she ignored her. The muscles in her back were impossibly tight, quivering under Belle’s hand. “He could put away three times what I did, and still be standing. Me…”

Belle closed her eyes, flattened her palm against Zelena’s ribs. She could almost feel the pain pulsing where they moved, keeping ragging rhythm with her breath. “Not so much, from the look of you.”

“Bloody genius, you are.” Zelena heaved one last time, then grew steady. “It’s not in my blood. Being like _that_. It’s not…”

Belle felt like she was balanced on the edge of a knife, poised to fall. “I understand,” she said. “At least, I think I do.”

“I spent years thinking it was.” She kept her head down, but she couldn’t hide the flush of her skin, the shame of making herself more than naked. “ _Years_. I thought the smallest little drop would turn me into him. A monster, something worse than just wicked. I thought his blood was a poison inside me, but it wasn’t.” She chuckled, hoarse and thick. Belle was sure she’d never heard a sound so terrible. “Well. It wasn’t inside me. It was still a poison, I suppose. But that’s his burden, not mine, and he can bloody well have it. God knows, he gave me enough of my own.”

Belle felt transformed, changed in a way she couldn’t fathom at the time. “I’m sorry,” she said, and even then it seemed so inadequate. “I didn’t know.”

Zelena lifted her head, bleary-eyed and blotchy. “So now I do this,” she said, “to remind myself that I can.” Her eyes roved Belle’s body, tongue darting out to wet her lips. “That all right with you?”

Belle didn’t know what to say. And so, like a fool, she said nothing.

*

She knows better now.

They’ve slept together and slept in each other’s arms so many times since then; how could she not? Belle has heard the dreams Zelena thinks she keeps to herself, the memories that cling like sweat to her skin. She’s heard the words she doesn’t say, the ones she won’t or can’t or doesn’t know how to, the stories no-one should ever have to tell. She knows now why she drinks, and why she swears it’s not like _that_. She knows more about her than anyone in Storybrooke. Not even Regina knows her sister so well, and Belle has a sneaking suspicion she doesn’t want to.

“It’s not in my blood,” Zelena says, and Belle knows her well enough now to squeeze her wrist and say, “I know.”

Zelena’s blood is bad enough without that particular taint. Belle doesn’t know much about her mother, Cora, but she has seen the scars she left in both her daughters and that’s enough. She’s seen what living with her did to Regina, what it made her, and she’s seen too what being without her did to Zelena; they were both such terrible people, and all for the want of the same woman. From her safe, simple distance, Belle can’t say for sure which one of them had it worse. It breaks her heart that they won’t ever get along well enough to help each other heal. They could do so much good, if they could only let go of the bad blood in their veins.

She doesn’t tell Zelena that it might be better if shared her father’s poisoned blood instead. If she was only susceptible to the stuff she drinks, if she was only weak to quick, violent bursts of temper, wouldn’t it all be so much simpler?

But oh, she’s not her father’s daughter. She is Cora’s, and her blood runs so much deeper than any bottle.

Zelena is so frightened of her wickedness, so hateful of her misdeeds and mistakes. She drinks when she gets upset, when she’s angry or lonely or wounded, and then she starts to tremble, terrified of becoming the monster her father was. _“A sad old drunk,”_ she calls him, voice dripping with spite, but Belle has heard her crying in her sleep and she knows that what he did to her was more than just _sad_.

She knows, too, that Zelena has done far worse things than her father ever did, and without addiction to blame for it. She was a villain, a cruel and jealous tyrant, and she has killed people.

Little wonder, then, that she’s so afraid of walking down that road again. Belle has watched her struggles from a distance, has seen her try to do better, to be better, to become the sort of mother her daughter deserves and the sort of sister Regina might want. She’s not particularly good at it most of the time, but she tries desperately hard. Belle has spent long enough with a man who never will to respect her for that.

“Don’t let me hurt you,” Zelena says again, and when Belle finds her lips with her fingertips she is struck by the sparks on her skin.

“Never,” she promises, over and over, until they’re both breathless.

*

Practice, in this particular art, makes perfect.

They’ve both learned a lot since that clumsy first time. Belle has taught herself not to think about Rumple, not to wonder or worry about what he’d think of this, what he would do if he caught them together. Zelena has learned to watch for the moments when her mind wanders, to lean in, to catch Belle’s earlobe between her teeth, to lick up the shell and murmur, “He can’t hurt me.”

Belle knows that’s true. Zelena has explained it before: a deal made in desperation, a life spared for another protected. She knows it’s true, knows that even if it weren’t Zelena has bested Rumple several times before. She knows that she is safe, that she won’t let herself be hurt by him. But still, there are moments when she worries; still, there are moments when she can’t close her mind to the fear, to the dread, to the awful realisation that she cares.

She never planned for this. She is married, if not happily at least in all the ways that matter, and though she and Rumple might not really be together right now, still it’s his child in her womb, his son she’s carrying. She can’t silence that, and it stings sometimes in a way she wasn’t prepared for, when Zelena leans in and presses her palms to Belle’s slowly swelling stomach, when her eyes grow soft and her belly grows tense. She’s still not recovered from her own pregnancy, Belle knows, the horror of what was done to her, and being a witness as Belle’s child grows the natural way is a balm for her, a cold kind of comfort she can neither explain nor understand.

Belle loves when Zelena opens herself up like that, loves when she touches her stomach and then her own, loves the intimacy of sharing this with someone who has been there. She loves everything about this, but it is so hard to look at her face without thinking of Rumple’s, so hard to hear her voice, touch her skin without knowing what he would do to them given half a chance.

“He’d kill you.” Her voice cracks, and she’s sure that she feels the baby kick. “If he knew what you were doing with me…”

Zelena smiles. She adores Belle’s moments of insecurity, her fluttering little panic attacks. She likes being able to do something good, to be kind for once in her life.

“He can’t hurt me,” she says, and kisses Belle’s stomach until she and the baby grow still.

Belle breathes, closes off her thoughts. “And you can’t hurt me,” she reminds them both.

Zelena’s pulse stutters under her fingers. “Please,” she huffs, and Belle knows that she means it in that wry, sardonic way she has, but that’s not how it sounds at all.

Belle cups her cheek, finds her flushed and feverishly warm. She wonders if she’ll ever find out what drove her to drink today, whether it’s about Regina or something else. Zelena’s reasons for doing anything are seldom simple, and she prefers to keep them to herself. Her definition of trust is a gnarled, corrupted sort of thing, and it doesn’t often make sense to anyone but her. Belle is trying to make her peace with that, trying to be patient, but it’s not so easy with a mind as naturally curious as hers.

It’s enough, she tells herself, that she gets to see Zelena like this at all. Not drunk — never drunk, oh no — but certainly not sober, her skin blazing like a furnace, her eyes bright. She is fractured and beautiful, and what a broken blessing that no-one else will ever see it.

“Let me…” Belle whispers, and doesn’t finish.

She doesn’t need to. The hitch of Zelena’s breath is permission, the stumble in her step an invitation, broadcasting the glass smashing in her head, the liquor running through her veins. She moves backwards, finding the bed without looking, and Belle wants so desperately to ask _‘how much did you have?’_ and _‘who hurt you this time?’_ , but she knows where the line is drawn.

Instead, she climbs over her, kisses her soundly, keeps her fingers clamped around her wrist, an anchor for both their fears.

Zelena could whisk their clothes away with a wave of her hand if she wanted, but she doesn’t. Her knuckles are pressed back against the pillow, tethered by Belle’s hand. Belle pushes a little, holding her down, holding her steady. _No magic here. I won’t allow it._ Her fingers are a poor substitute for the cuff that took Zelena’s powers away, but of course that’s the point; it’s a choice this time, freely made. Here, now, safe in Belle’s arms, Zelena wants to be silenced. She wants Belle to be the one to silence her, to hold her down and hold herself over her, to hold her by the wrist and whisper, _‘no magic here’_.

That’s what Belle wants too. She didn’t realise that before this started. She couldn’t see the person she could be through the person she was, the one she always thought she had to be.

Zelena is incredibly powerful. Next to Rumple, she may well be the most powerful person in Storybrooke. Belle has seen her do things that even Regina can’t, or else things that took Regina the longest time to master. Belle only knows of magic what she’s read in her books, but she’s seen it in practice often enough to measure it without much effort. Rumple’s is addictive, more so for him than for her, and she had always resigned herself to being beneath it both figuratively and literally. A girl like her doesn’t stand a chance against a power like his, and she was never so deluded as to imagine she did.

But look at her now. Here, not for the first time but for what feels like the hundredth, on top of perhaps the most powerful woman in this world, holding her down, holding her utterly at her mercy. Zelena might be the one with the power, but again and again she hands it over, lets them both believe it’s the other way around. Belle can taste the magic on Zelena’s skin, and it feels so much like it belongs to her, like it is _hers_.

It’s the most invigorating, intoxicating feeling she’s ever known. That she alone can do this, bind Zelena not with magic but with her own two hands, the one around her wrist and the other sliding under her clothes. That Zelena would want this, not from anyone else but from her, the bookworm, the foolish little thing who always needs her help. That these things happen again and again and again, a revelation for them both.

“Please,” Zelena says again, and she’s not trying to be wry this time, she’s arching and aching, and Belle is so powerless and so powerful all at once. She would do anything, _anything_.

It’s a fumble, getting their clothes off with both of them one-handed, but the routine is easy and comfortable by now. Gone are the clumsy, confused women of that awkward first time, Belle distracted and uneasy, Zelena tearful and tragic, both of them thinking of the wrong people in the wrong moments. Gone is the discomfort, the nervousness, and in its place is something newly familiar, an ageless, timeless, effortless thing that lifts them out of the world and sets them down somewhere else, somewhere so far away that neither of their beasts will ever, ever find them.

Naked, exposed, Zelena’s body gleams. Her chest is flushed, and Belle is mesmerised by the rise and fall, the quickening of her breath not in anger or sorrow or fear but in want, in need, in _her_. She doesn’t speak again, but her breath comes in stuttering half-words, whimpers and whines that speak a language all their own.

Belle’s free hand slides down, tracing curves and mapping contours. Her thumb moves too, stroking a line up and down the side of Zelena’s wrist. The one is a tease, the other to temper it, to soothe and strengthen; both have a similar effect. Belle learned a while ago that Zelena is almost impossibly sensitive, that even the most fleeting contact shakes her right down to her nerves. It’s still a challenge, she explained once, allowing herself to be touched without expecting a struggle or a shackle.

She lets Belle touch her with abandon, though. She gives away all her power, lets Belle claim it all for her own. That’s a gift for them both, one that neither of them takes for granted.

Belle groans when she finds her already slick and ready, though she knew that she would. Zelena is always so eager, and it’s never more apparent than when she spreads herself open and sighs. It’s not just about the sensuality, Belle has learned, or the sex. It’s about this, about them, about her, about being laid bare, about being taken by someone she can trust, someone she wants to love.

Zelena’s body is very loud. Like her, it is expressive and utterly exquisite. It whispers and shouts when her voice can’t find the words, and its language is something deliciously exotic. Belle has always been an expert in mastering new tongues, and _oh_ , she is fluent now in Zelena’s.

She captures it now, her tongue and the words it refuses to shape.

 _Please,_ Zelena doesn’t say. Belle doesn’t need to hear it again, doesn’t need to know. She just _does_ , swallowing Zelena’s whimpers and cries, stroking and squeezing her wrist in time with the rocking of her hips, the shifting of her thighs, the shuddering and the strength and the slow, sweet swell of her own desire.

Zelena is an ocean beneath her, vast and endless and beset with storms. On top of her, tossed and drenched, Belle feels like a boat made out of paper, too stubborn to ever sink.

 _You’ll keep me strong,_ she thinks, _and I’ll keep you safe._

*

It hasn’t always been so natural.

The first few times, it was an ordeal for them both. Zelena would get on top and cover Belle with her body because that was the way they were both used to doing it. It seemed so simple, so logical, the only way things could possibly be.

Zelena isn’t as heavy as Rumple, but her presence is just as potent; when she’s on top, she smothers and suffocates everything under her. Early on, Belle would feel her breath stop, not with passion but with panic, the same feeling she used to get with Rumple when the dark magic swelled and broke in him. _You’ve killed so many people,_ she thought, first with him and then with her. _What’s to stop me from being next?_

She was so used to Rumple’s indifference, though, that it never even occurred to her to look up at Zelena and discover that she wasn’t the only one who was afraid.

“Did I hurt you?” Zelena asked once.

Her throat trembled against Belle’s mouth, her breath stuttering against her temple, and when Belle raised her eyes she saw her own panic reflected tenfold.

“No…” Her voice broke. “No, I…”

But the damage was done. Like always, the words unspoken drowned out the ones on her lips. Blanching white as a sheet, Zelena scrambled off her and clamped a hand around her own wrist. Belle didn’t understand the gesture at the time, the nervous habit of imitating the cuff that once quashed her magic; she wouldn’t learn about that until a few days and a few bottles later.

“Why didn’t you say so?” Zelena was asking, voice rising in pitch, in panic, in everything. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because you didn’t.” Belle willed herself to stay calm. Why wasn’t it working? “You didn’t hurt me. You barely even touched me.”

“You’re shaking.” That was true, but then so was Zelena. “My god, you’re…”

Belle shook her head, but she didn’t try to explain. She couldn’t. How could she tell her new lover — no, not quite her lover, not yet, not back then — that lying beneath her made her think of being smothered and suffocated by her husband? How could she explain that it didn’t really hurt then either, that Rumple never did anything she didn’t want, that the only beast she ever fought in him was of her own making?

“Zelena,” she breathed. The name held power, a reminder of everything she wasn’t. “ _Zelena_.”

Zelena closed her eyes and didn’t say anything at all. She was quivering, trembling almost harder than Belle was, gripping her wrist so tightly that her knuckles turned white. Belle studied the blue lines, the veins criss-crossing the skin, watched as it paled and bruised. Zelena was a study in colour contrast, flushing red across her chest, her neck, her belly and lower, but white as death where her fingers strangled the skin.

Belle covered her hand with her own, and slowly pried her fingers away. Zelena tensed, rigid as a board, but she let it happen because it was Belle, because even back then she trusted her.

“I heard the sounds you made,” she said, after a long stifling silence. “You were in pain or you were scared of me. Both as bad as each other.”

“I wasn’t scared of you.” Belle sighed. Her thumb scaled the hills of Zelena’s knuckles. “I just felt trapped for a moment. That’s all.”

Zelena nodded, but she didn’t look convinced. “I wouldn’t blame you,” she said, almost to herself. “You know what I’ve done. What I was. You know what I could do to you. If I wanted to, if I lost control, if I…”

Belle stretched up, silencing her with a kiss that went on and on.

When it was over, when Zelena was quiet and breathless, Belle framed her face with her hands, pushed back her hair and said, as soft as a breath, “I think we should try this another way.”

And so they did. Belle on top, demanding and directing, body glowing with a strength she didn’t know she had, Zelena beneath her, head thrown back in complete surrender, hair wild and tangled against the pillow. The slightest shift, the smallest change, but it made everything completely different. Belle had never felt so powerful before; Rumple would sooner perish than surrender his precious control, but Zelena gave it up like it was a burden, like it felt as wonderful for her to be free of it as it felt for Belle when it breathed new life inside her.

“Oh…” Belle gasped, overwhelmed. “Oh this, oh you, oh _my_ …”

Exposed and yielding beneath her, Zelena said, “Yes, I suppose I am.”

*

She says it more often now, a mantra with a world of meaning.

“Yours,” she says, and only when it’s out does she add, “I am.”

It means a lot of things. On some days it means _‘I had too much to drink’_ and on others it means _‘I didn’t have enough to drink’_. Often, it means _‘Take me to bed, push me down and overpower me, make me as weak as possible and make sure I won’t hurt you or anyone else’_. Less often, it means _‘I’m not in control of myself so I need you to be, I need you to stop me, I need you to hold me, I need you, I need you, I need you’_.

Sometimes, the rarest of all and still so scary for them both, it means _‘you are beautiful and I want to lie beneath your body forever’_.

Zelena is terrible with words. Whatever she’s trying to say, whatever her intention, it always comes out caustic and corrosive and cruel; it’s a dual curse, the pitch of her voice and the person she is both conspiring to kill the sincerity before it breathes its first, but that’s not the only problem. She’s not literary like Belle is, never had the lifetime of libraries that have shaped Belle’s experience and vocabulary. Zelena only has the words she’s heard, and so few of those are pleasant. So instead she uses other words, ones that mean completely different things. Over and over and over, she says them, and every repetition unlocks a new cache of meaning.

She says it again here now, weightless and writhing, suspended and slack-jawed and so _close_. “Yours,” she gasps. “I am, I am, I am.”

Belle doesn’t say it back. She has spent far too long belonging to someone else, being theirs, and as glorious as it is when Zelena is naked and wanting and begging beneath her she doesn’t want to conflate what they have with what she had with Rumple. She was his, and maybe a piece of him was hers as well but that part was so small and so thoroughly fractured that it bore little resemblance to the man she loved. She has lived a life of compromises and surrender, of being an object or someone else’s property, and she will never, ever do that again. Not for anyone.

“I know,” she says to Zelena, as breathless and close as she is.

That means a lot of things too. It means _‘I know what you mean’_ and _‘I know who you are’_ , _‘I know what you want’_ and _‘I know what you need’_. It means _‘I won’t let you hurt me’_ and _‘I won’t let you become the thing you’re so afraid of’_. On the very best days, days like today, it means _‘I trust you’_ and _‘I care about you’_ and _‘oh god, I think I could love you’_.

They communicate in fractures of sentences, in ideas half-formed and never truly spoken. Zelena trips over a tongue made heavy with liquor, and Belle answers with a voice so newly freed it’s all but unfamiliar to her. They don’t talk much about the things that make them so similar, the shadows where their bodies fit together. They don’t need to. Zelena chokes on her past and Belle kisses her until it slides more easily down her throat, and when Belle feels suffocated or smothered or small Zelena lays down under her and surrenders to her strength.

Zelena is unfettered when she comes, as wild and wicked in this as she is in everything else she does. Her voice rises with her pleasure, higher and higher and higher until Belle knows she’ll never reach it, knows she will never climb high enough to bring it back down to earth. She can only float, riding the perfect storm of Zelena’s hips, letting the sound and the motion carry her towards her own climax, not quite so loud but every bit as powerful.

When it’s over, when they’re both spent and boneless, Zelena pulls Belle down to lie on top of her. Belle isn’t so deluded as to think she really is as light as she feels right now, but Zelena doesn’t seem to feel the weight of her at all. She seems to enjoy this part almost more than the sex itself, being swallowed up and smothered, Belle’s body like an anchor tethering her to her thoughts, a canopy to shield them both from the world outside, the harsh weather and the harsher whispers, the people they love, the people who always, always break their hearts.

Zelena presses her lips to Belle’s jaw. “Stay?”

Belle smiles, the expression lost in a tangle of red hair. “And here I thought I was the sentimental one.”

“I’m not _sentimental_.” She says the word like it’s an insult; she makes every tender word sound that way. “I just like having you here. And you’re good at what you do.”

“Ah, so that’s it.”

She doesn’t believe it for a second, though. That’s kind of the point; Zelena doesn’t want her to. They both know what it’s really about, what she really means, but she can’t say that any more than she can say all the other things that tangle up in her throat, any more than Belle can say the things she feels, the things they both know are dangerous. _You say that he can’t hurt you, but I know him and I know what he’s capable of. He’ll find some loophole, he’ll do whatever it takes to make you pay, and I can’t watch that, I can’t let it happen, oh god oh god I can’t lose you._

She doesn’t say it. She just lets her mouth linger at Zelena’s temple, lips leaving a stain that only they know is there. It’s not nearly enough, it’s not what she wants, but it’s all she can afford.

“I’d rewrite the world for you,” Zelena says. Belle pulls back to find her eyes half-lidded, her expression delirious and achingly soft. “But I know you wouldn’t want me to. You’d say it was—”

“—wicked,” Belle finishes, then shakes her head. “Because it _is_.”

“I know.” Zelena sighs. “My god, what would I do without you?”

More and more, Belle finds herself wondering the same thing.

*

They never say goodbye.

Belle dresses slowly; Zelena doesn’t dress at all. She lounges naked on the bed, and watches without a word. She’s got an uncomfortable look on her face now, drained and just a little queasy, the same look she had after their first time. Belle can’t tell whether it’s the liquor getting to her or just the moment, the inevitability of parting and being left alone.

“Will you be all right?” she asks, concerned in spite of herself.

Zelena forces a smile. Belle can see the words she can’t say, can taste their echoes on her tongue, _no_ and _please_ and _stay_.

“I always am,” she says. “Don’t you worry about me, love.”

Oh, what a weighted word that is. _Love_ , crisp and sharp like the first bite from a green apple. She balances it carefully, expertly, wry in a way her accent allows, coded by the way she can never quite conceal her heart. Zelena can get away with saying it like that, pretending there’s no secrets hidden behind the sharpness. Belle can’t get away with saying it at all.

Instead, because the lie is easy, she says, “I wasn’t worried.”

Zelena’s eyes cloud over, storms gathering behind the blue, and then they slide shut. “Of course you weren’t.”

Belle wants nothing more than to go back to bed and kiss the loneliness out of her, out of them both, to kiss her until the world ends, until she doesn’t have to worry about reconciling her heart with her head. She wants so desperately to say _‘do it, rewrite the world for me, for us, for this, make it so I won’t ever have to leave you again’_. She wants to, but she won’t.

“Zelena,” she says, and it’s so hard, so heavy, so much the opposite of everything she is.

“Yeah.” Her accent slips ever so slightly; for a moment she sounds almost like Belle. “I know. Can’t afford it, right?”

“Right.” She tries to catch her breath, digs down deep. She’s the one with the words, a hundred thousand libraries gathering dust inside her heart. It shouldn’t be so difficult to find the right one. “If I did… worry, I mean… I’d probably never leave.”

“Can’t have that, now, can we?”

Belle grits her teeth. “Zelena.”

“I know, I know. Sorry.”

She is. That’s the crazy thing, the impossible thing. Zelena, who has hurt and killed people, who has done the most unspeakable things all in the name of selfishness, who would never apologise to anyone for anything, yet here she is whispering _“sorry”_ with the raw sincerity of someone who has lived with regret and remorse her entire life. Belle learned a long, long time ago the difference between a true apology and one given just to keep the peace — Rumple always had a talent for blurring those lines — and this one touches her more deeply than she will ever say.

“One day,” she says, though of course she knows it’s a lie. “Maybe.”

Zelena chuckles. “You and me, some quaint little country house far away from this blasted town…” Her gaze rests on Belle’s stomach, lingers just a moment too long. “A great big garden for the children to play in…”

“Something like that,” Belle says, and _oh_ , she wants it so very badly.

It’s a beautiful image, but she knows it can never be. It demands something neither of them are ready for, something they may never have. Peace, serenity, a sense of self-awareness that runs deeper than this thing they share. A version of Zelena who is at one with her powers, who has made peace with her past pains, the ones she inflicted and the ones inflicted on her too. A version of Belle who knows precisely how powerful she is, how strong she can be, who has learned to depend on herself as much as someone else. They have taken so many steps these past few weeks, but is that enough? Will it ever be, for either one of them?

Not that it matters. Zelena, being Zelena, won’t let a pretty picture stick in her head for more than a moment or two. She’s been hurt too many times by faith and hope, and not even Belle can soften the parts of her that have only seen disappointment.

She laughs, a choked-off sort of sound that says _this isn’t funny_ , and mutters, “How utterly sickening.”

“Is it?” Belle asks.

Zelena turns very pale. Belle can see her history swimming behind her eyes, rich and thick as liquor, raw and vulnerable as her heart; they can’t seem to find purchase on anything, even her.

“No,” she say, a confession that barely breaks a whisper. “Rather the opposite, actually.”

Something shatters in Belle’s chest. It’s not the words themselves that do it, not even the tremors in Zelena’s voice as she says them, fractured and so fragile. It’s something else, something in the look on her face, the terror and the way she doesn’t even try to hide it. Her eyes are so blue and so deep; Belle has plumbed their depths a thousand times now without any hope of ever reaching the bottom. _Why are you so afraid?_ , she wants to ask, but she doesn’t because she is afraid too, of the answer.

She stands there, transfixed. Zelena is so exposed, so vulnerable lying there on the bed, her skin translucent, her hair fanning out over the pillow, her eyes wide and worried and wanting. Belle wants to capture her in a frame, make a portrait out of her, something all-consuming but small enough to carry with her wherever she goes. She wants to capture the moment too, the emotion shimmering like gold dust between them, like the rarest, most precious stones in the world. She wants so much, so much.

She wets her lips, steels her heart. “Maybe…”

Zelena sits up just a little. Her body moves like water, thighs shifting stickily, hips flaring, a flush spreading across her chest. The hope burns brighter behind her eyes, and Belle finds herself blinded for a moment to everything else.

“Yes?”

Belle closes her eyes, watches the afterimage flicker and fade on her eyelids. Blue, blue, blue, and _oh_ , she wants to spend the rest of her life counting its shades.

“Maybe…” She swallows. “Maybe I am a little worried, after all.”

Zelena’s breath stops. Belle can hear the molecules move on the air. She opens her eyes, finds Zelena staring at her. Her lips are wet, half-parted in an invitation.

“You don’t have to…” she starts, but she can’t seem to finish.

“I know.” She’s already halfway back to the bed. “I want to. I want…”

_You. This. Us._

Zelena doesn’t need to hear any of that. She might not have Belle’s penchant for literature, but she can read her face and her body just as thoroughly as Belle can read hers. She knows her, understands her, hears her when she can’t speak, and by the time Belle gets to the bed, she’s already reaching for her hand.

“Stay,” she says.

Her fingers brush Belle’s knuckles, tentative and fleeting and utterly intoxicating. Belle looks down, finds the space between them spread out vast and vacant, a world of words just waiting for a voice.

She doesn’t give them one. She doesn’t need to.

She takes a deep breath, takes Zelena’s wrist in her hand, and nods.

***


End file.
